With pleasure - Sex education for adults with intellectual disabilities

Scroll down for plain English I’ve arrived in Malmo and already been invited to a queer BBQ, a drag pub quiz and sunbathed naked by the sea pool - Sweden is treating me well! I also met with academic Dr Julia Bahner from Lund University where our conversation introduced me to a new concept: social health. Social health is a dimension of overall wellbeing which stems from connection and community.  Promotion of social health requires investment in the skills that enable someone to access and participate in such communities at local, national and international levels. These skills, which include understanding norms of social engagement, emoting ‘appropriately’, shared idiosyncrasies and language etc are often taken for granted but for adults with cognitive disabilities they often need to be learnt. Understanding the rules of social engagement extend far beyond manners and pleasantries, and involves recognising when and how to modify behaviour for different parts of your social ecosys...

Scroll down for plain English version A few days ago I sat down with academic researchers tasked with evaluating the VIP project - a Swedish adaptation of the Australian sex education programme SLRR. A conversation that was meant to be about sexual health ended up focused on the nature of the state and this made me reflect on how philosophies of the state shape the welfare that it provides.  The SLRR (sexual lives and respectful relationships) programme was a multi-week sex ed programme designed in Australia by people with intellectual disabilities for people with intellectual disabilities. It’s built on the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ recognising that adults with intellectual disabilities are experts in their own lives. Swedish and Norwegian states adopted and adapted this programme and disseminated it across both countries, the Swedish model decentralised across municipalities and the Norwegian model centralised and adopted by NGOs. The Swedish evaluators of VIP re...